


It's In Your Blood

by xbedhead



Category: Justified
Genre: AU, Gen, Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-08
Updated: 2012-05-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 21:50:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xbedhead/pseuds/xbedhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He supposed he should’ve felt sorry for them, packing back to the hills from their fancy new home in Corbin like they’d had to do.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's In Your Blood

**Author's Note:**

> This was beta'd by my newest LJ buddy, [](http://dapatty.livejournal.com/profile)[**dapatty**](http://dapatty.livejournal.com/) and I owe her many thanks. This story started to take form when I was finally able to start watching _Justified_ again last year. Season 3 was about to begin and I mainlined season 2 in two sittings. At the end, I was left wondering what would happen (not knowing that season 3 would start almost immediately after and even deal with the fallout from the destruction of the Bennett empire) and sorted through all my questions with this. Now that we've seen the third season, this is obviously not the route that it went, so it's AU, but I still enjoyed it. I liked exploring the hold that family name has over the characters - whether they spend their life either trying to live up to it or run away from it. Any thoughts or discourse are welcome.

~*~

Black Pike had somehow, some way, retracted on Mags’ agreement – no surprise there, not from a coal company. Something about the monthly compensation being under Doyle’s name and, well, now that Doyle was dead, it wasn’t their fault he didn’t have his affairs in order with his second wife (the first one, God rest her soul). No lawyer anyone **cared** to hire could hold a candle to even the junior associates on Black Pike’s retainer. The Marshal’s Service had seized the rest, but knew there was more.

There had been talk of a sit-in at the mine – on principle, not fidelity – but that was washed away with the slurry when it started flowing, covering the blood and the blame. The Bennetts had done precious little, especially there in the end, to keep their name from backwoods curses ( _whispered, of course_ ). Their empire had all but disappeared, the ruins of Rome, left for some social science major at Eastern to discover during their senior thesis on insular societies or some-such bullshit.

None of the cousins cared to step up, not to try and fill the shoes Mags had left behind. And how? Boyd Crowder had reestablished his daddy’s domain and then some. All the muscle was gone – gunning for the Crowders or at the family house, they were either taken away on a stretcher or in handcuffs that day. Some had gotten out already; they were young enough not to have a record as long as their arm. But most, well, most were still behind bars serving for one backlogged offense or another.

So…when Sarah-Jean Bennett and her boys moved back to Harlan, it was safe to say no one was thrilled with the arrangement –

_Serves ‘er right, doin’ us the way they did._

_Dance with the devil and you get burnt._

_What’d she expect? A welcome home party after all Mags and her boys did?_

– least of all Pruitt and Doyle Junior.

Now, settled back into their old home, there was work to be done. The store was in shambles, picked clean with shelves upended and glass on the floors. The boys were busy outside while Sarah-Jean was, he assumed, negotiating the restocking with the Bunny Bread deliveryman parked near the back.

He imagined they still had a little bit of money saved up of that initial payment from Black Pike. If they managed to sell the house in Corbin, they would have enough to live on, he calculated, at least until people began forgetting their grudge against Mags and started buying Ho-Hos and motor oil from Sarah-Jean, harmless thing that she was, baby on her hip and all.

Doyle Junior high on a ladder and Pruitt squatted below him, they painted, swift strokes, white emulsion slapping and splattering all over their jeans and arms and the powder-dry dirt. In the sun, the first coat was drying fast and Raylan could see it would need at least two, maybe three over the black. If you tilted your head just right, you could still see the hastily scrawled insults - _Traitors, Back Stabbers, Benedicts_.

“Boys,” he greeted as he made his way up to the storefront. “Your momma inside?”

Both stared him down, not saying a word until Pruitt dropped his brush in the paint bucket and jutted his chin toward the door.

Raylan tipped his hat and stepped into the store, pulling his Stetson down to rest over his belt buckle. She was behind the counter, stooped over as she swept up another load of debris into a metal wash bucket. He waited a few beats, knowing that she knew someone was in the store, but guessing that whatever she needed to finish took precedence at the moment.

He took in the upheaval and was reminded of the chaos after a tornado he’d seen touch down around Sikeston, Missouri, about eighteen years back – bulbs hanging from their fixtures, fishing worms crawling and crickets hopping everywhere, Icee syrup stuck to every tile within a ten-foot radius of the machine. The place had literally been stripped; even insulation was coming out of cracks in the wood paneling – like someone had been looking for something.

Which was precisely why he had come back here – if there was something to be looked for, there was something to be found, his Aunt Helen had always said.

Sarah-Jean stood and brushed her dusty hands on her blue jeans, wiped a lock of sweaty, dirty-blonde hair behind her ear. She said nothing.

“Sarah-Jean,” he offered quietly as he neared the counter, hat still in hand.

“Marshal.”

“How you makin’ out?”

“Better’n you, seein’ as I ain’t got a hole in my side.”

Raylan lifted his hat a little and gently patted the gauze patch hidden beneath his t-shirt. “I’ll heal.”

He kept quiet after that, not sure of how to broach his query and less-than-eager to mention anything related to the woman’s late husband. But he didn’t have to wait long.

Sarah-Jean drew in a deep breath, seemed to steel herself against an upcoming onslaught as she dropped her handle broom and picked up a plastic bucket of soapy water. “Doyle was a good man, Raylan – you know that,” she said, with more than a little heat to her voice as she set the red pail on the counter with a slosh. “He wasn’t like the rest of ‘em.”

“I know that – even if people ‘round here forgot – but I also know that he had loyalty to family first and – ”

“You say that like it ain’t the way it’s s’posed to be.”

“I’m _sayin’_ it like that’s the way it is,” he answered firmly. “I’m sayin’ it like the way you knew they were up to somethin’.”

She crossed her arms and set her jaw, the picture of defiance. “Prove it.”

He sighed, ready to rip off the proverbial Band-Aid. “ _Look_ , Sarah-Jean,” he started plaintively, hands outstretched before him like he knew this was going to cause a storm, “I need to know. I’m just gonna ask ya straightforward – did you find any of Mags’ money she had hidden up in coffee cans and bedposts or wherever the hell it is that she woulda put it? I don’t wanna bring the Service in here, tearin’ up things more’n they already are.”

Sarah-Jean stared him down, eyes boring into him for a solid four seconds before she huffed a bit and held her hands up, displaying the shell of her family’s once-kingdom. “What do you think?”

“I’m _askin’_ you, not tellin’ what I think.”

“Snoop around. I’m sure folks’d be glad to share news ‘bout me – even with the _prodigal prince_ of Harlan.”

He smiled ruefully and set his hat back on his head. “That’s got a nice ring to it, but I don’t exactly have many endeared to me up in these parts.”

She snorted out a laugh and slapped a damp rag down on the countertop. “Don’t surprise me none,” she huffed as she scrubbed. “Your papa was a leg breaker. Wasn’t a kid, even on _this_ side of the holler, whose old man hadn’t been wailed on by your daddy – mine included.”

Raylan chose that moment to stretch a bit, shaking his head as he forced a smile this time and grunted out, “Well, Arlo’s lost a bit of his bite since then and I don’t pack much of a wallop myself. Not at the moment, anyways.”

“Well, don’t you come in here thinkin’ you’re somethin’ more just because you got a tin star in your pocket.”

“I don’t think the thought ever crossed my mind, Sarah-Jean.”

She regarded him for a moment, hand still moving the rag around absently. She pushed a little laugh out through her nose and concentrated on a stain that wasn’t ever gonna come out. “This is my home, Raylan,” she started quietly, “always will be – but I ain’t a fool. Mags took care of her own and I ain’t a Bennett, not by blood. She messed up somewhere along the lines and now my kids is sufferin’ for it. You think if I had a ounce of Mags’ money, I’da come back like I did? Brought my boys, my _baby_ , into this?”

Raylan held her gaze and saw truth in her hazel eyes – she was stuck and he’d known the feeling well. He clucked his tongue and let out a sigh. “No, I…I don’t reckon you would’ve.”

On cue, a plaintive wail started up from somewhere behind the old cash register. Sarah-Jean bent down and picked up the squirming bundle by the arm, positioning the baby against her side as she worked on shushing her.

Raylan smiled, waggled his finger a little bit, but the eighteen month-old kept crying, hungry for food or attention either one.

“You need anything else?” she asked, almost civil, tired.

“No, I don’t s’pose I do. Take care, Sarah-Jean.”

She said nothing and he walked back out to the porch, choosing to stay in the shade a few moments. The street was empty and there wasn’t a sound to be heard, not even a rain dove, though he could see the clouds moving in the distance.

The painting had stopped for a smoke break and the boys stood as Raylan moved away from the ice bin and onto the steps. He considered them both and stated quietly, “Just wanted to say I’m…sorry about your daddy. He cared a lot about you boys.”

Doyle Junior straightened and Raylan noted that he’d taken after his uncle Coover, all bulk and coal fire in his veins. At fourteen, he’d already cleared six feet. “I know who you are, Raylan Givens, and we don’t need your sympathies.”

Pruitt had come to stand beside his brother and though he was a head shorter and two years younger, he’d catch up, maybe even surpass Doyle Junior before all was said and done. They’d entered the world as Bennetts, though it was a long time before one could actually _earn_ the name.

But then Raylan saw their eyes and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a new generation had been born.


End file.
